But Sistani's calls concerning the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites are not being heeded. Sheikh Abd al-Mahdi al-Karbalai, a representative of Sistani in the holy city of Karbala, said that “the authority's concern is like a wake-up call for all of the political forces in Iraq as well as for the regional and international parties.”
Karbalai was very pessimistic, saying that “Sistani does not see any concrete initiatives to solve the crisis, [especially] since there are further complications.”
Abdul Hussein Abtan, the Shiite leader of the Supreme Council, said that “the political crisis will not be solved before we are committed to a truce, and more importantly, before we implement the recommendations of the religious authority, Ali al-Sistani.” Abtan further told Al-Monitor over the phone that the “Sistani recommendations include paying attention to the problems of citizens and seeking calm.”
Meanwhile, some Iraqi observers went so far as to ask Sistani to intervene and directly call on the parties to refrain from pushing the country to the brink of civil war.
Yassin al-Bakri, a political science professor at the Nahrain University, told Al-Monitor that "the performance of the political forces involved in the conflict has exhausted the chances of dialogue and understanding. They are no longer thinking of settlement deals to get things back to normal. Everything now sets the stage for bad future prospects in the country.”
According to this bleak picture painted by Bakri, the domestic public finds that the only solution is Sistani's intervention. Bakri continued, “There is no solution yet. Everything has reached a dead end, and all that is left is for the Shiite cleric to intervene in order to curb the tendencies of the political forces and prevent an armed conflict between the communities.”
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